Oh What A Feeling... When You are Dancing on the Ceiling

Have you ever danced in Church? In 2 Samuel 6, King David danced before the Lord. One of the cultural differences here is that we dance in church. I have to admit, Karis usually drags me out to dance with her in the circle, but this was Easter Sunday and we were told that specific people will dance at certain times. Karis and Heather were dancing with the women. The men did join in and Caleb grabbed mom and went to dancing. O.K. it's not the type of dancing you see in the U.S. This type of dancing is more like a conga line that goes around in a circle with a two step beat. Yes, I have learned the two step, but it is still not pretty. Dancing like David is fun, maybe you should try it in your church, or not. :) Mike

More of the Kids

Here are some additional pictures. You'll notice a picture of our children freezing to death in the frigid tundra!! ;) Ha ha! It was every bit of 95 degrees that day, but for some reason the nuts had on their warmest clothes!

We love you and miss you!

Heather

Rural Family Turns Urban

I grew up in a small town in rural Tennessee. Since then, I've lived on some outskirts of bigger cities, but never anything all that large. Since moving to Africa, we've been living in a city of 4 million people. Even though we lived here, our work was to keep us among people that have moved here from the village. Now, we've taken on a job assignment to work among all of the unreached in this monstrous city! What a task! We have to not only seek to reach people from all walks of life, but we have to study and understand how this urban mindset has affected these people and how to best reach them because of that. So now that that is settled, buy your tickets and come see us! :) If you bring a team from your church, we've got a multitude of possibilities that await you. If you come alone, we've got a lovely spacious home with running water and electricity. Not everybody in West Africa can offer that kind of accommodations! :) Get your passport, save your airline points and vacation in a tropical paradise. (Ammenities might have been slightly exaggerated to peak your interest. We cannot be held responsible for possible misconceptions! ;))

We have a new French tutor now. Because of our new assignment it became obvious that we'd be operating more out of French than was first expected. Hopefully this new teacher will help us get there.

Karis has fully recovered from her little malaria scare. There is still no way to know what exactly was the culprit of the illness, but we are thankful she's back to normal.

Baby Jeremiah has gone home from the hospital. Thank you so much for your prayers for mom and baby. We'll try to keep you posted on how our little man of God grows. We will have less contact with mom and baby for a while now, so pray that she continues to grow in her faith and finds believers to help her along the way.

We are flying solo for a few weeks. Our supervisors are out of the country and we are to keep up the work in Vridi alone. Sounds a little scary, but we hope to be able to do it. We will talk about Easter this week, the ultimate sacrifice for our sin, and the resurrection. Pray that we can cross those language barriers and be bold in our witness.

I'm posting some random pictures from the last few weeks. Hope you'll enjoy.

Happy Resurrection Sunday and love to all! Eat some ham for us, we'll be making do with lasagna!
Heather

Decisions, Decisions, Decisions!

We are now, once again, trying to decide what we are going to do with the rest of our life! :) Don't panic, we're not coming home. Through the research we've conducted as we've been here, we've discovered a significant number of Mossi already in churches. That means that they don't necessarily need us working with them full time. I've been putting off writing this as I hoped to have more answers of what we'd be doing, but I wanted you all to pray for us as we try to work through the possibilities. There is a very lost city here where we are and that is what we are prayerfully considering tackling. Pray that we get clear direction as to our next steps.

Regular life is going on as normal. I can say more French words than I could this time last week, but not as many as I hope to know by next week. We just keep moving along. Some days feel like more of a snail's pace than others.

Although tax day is far off for most of you, Monday is the board's deadline for us to get ours in. I finished most of that work today and I definitely have to say that I am glad April 15 only comes once a year!

Thanks for your prayers for Felicite and baby Jeremiah. When we visited yesterday afternoon, he still looked well. He's just so little! As we sat there visiting, his mom bowed her head in prayer before giving him his formula in his little feeding tube. Later on she told us that she thinks that Jeremiah will be a great man of God some day that preaches the Word. She humbly asked that we'd pray that she would be a good servant of God.

On another note, Caleb's face is healing well. He's already making sure that we have another beach trip in the plans to replace the ruined one from last week. We were only there long enough to get wet before we had to leave.

We are beginning to make summer plans here as I'm sure you are. We hope to have 2 volunteer teams. We'd love to see you here soon, too! If we take the large job that we are looking at, we are hoping to have volunteer teams here all the time!!

I hope to take some pictures this afternoon at a kids club we've been going to, but didn't want to put off writing the blog. So far we are too much of a disturbance merely by our presence and I haven't wanted to get out the camera to cause more trouble.

Don't forget to set your clocks forward! We like that from this side of the ocean because it makes you closer to our time!!

Love to all!
Heather

Like Father, Like Son, or Scar Face

I don't know if you have noticed. But my face (Mike) has several scars on it from my childhood. The other day Caleb decided he wanted to look just like his dad. We now both have a scar next to our right eye. Caleb was swimming in the pool when he jerked his head straight into edge of the pool. We had to put butterflies on it to keep it from getting worse from the swelling. I am sure he will have a scar just like his dad. Don't worry Caleb is fine. He is even very proud of his new scar.